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THE PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 565 
and to pay high rents for pasture land!, though their agri- AD 1s 
culture was backward in the extreme? The woollen weavers, ’ 
in all parts of the country, appear to have enjoyed allotments 
or large gardens; but some of those who were engaged in 
the more recently introduced cotton industry were aggre- 
gated in towns, and suffered from the want of healthful 
relaxation which could be combined with work at their 
looms®. In many small towns like Kettering the artisans 
had allotments or pasture rights; and hence it may be said 
that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a 
large part of the industrial population® which was not yet 
divorced from rural employments, 
This double source of income gave an immense stability aud thelr 
oy . “ . 08LLIon 
to the labourers’ position; but it did not necessarily con- was so 
duce to energy. Labourers and artisans could afford to be **® 
idle at times, and they had comparatively little incentive 
bo work; the possibilities of enjoyment within their reach 
were very limited. The yeoman farmers, who formed the 
class immediately above the labourers, led a sordid life®; 
\ Annals of Agriculture, XxvIr. 309. 
} Ann. of Agricul. x1.135. “The land in this part is almost wholly occupied in 
small plots or farms, by manufacturers, merely for the convenience of keeping a few 
cows, for milk for their children, apprentices, and inmates, and a horse to job to 
and from the mills, market, ete., hence it is, that the business of a farmer has, for 
a long time, been a subordinate consideration with almost every manufacturer, 
his views and ideas are narrow and contracted, and are confined to the cloth 
trade; in this method he jogs on; and such is the force of prejudice, that if any- 
one does not follow the old course of husbandry, he is frequently langhed at by 
his neighbours, and very invidiously considered as a visionary and an innovator ; 
and the chief reason which they advance in defence of this old antiquated pro- 
cedure, is that their forefathers have practised it.” 
3 Ib. xxxvi. 546. 
b Ip. xxx1X. 259, 244 note. 
> At West Bromwich, the seat of the nail trade, agriculture “is carried on so 
connectedly with manufactures that it is subservient to them.” Ib. Iv. 157. 
¢ Arthur Young's testimony is clear: “From all the observations I have made, 
[ am convinced that the latter, when on an equality with the former (little farmer) 
in respect of children, is as well fed, as well clothed, and sometimes as well 
lodged as he would be, was he fixed in one of these little farms; with this 
difference—that he does not work near so hard. They fare extremely hard— 
work without intermission like a horse—and practise every lesson of diligence and 
frugality, without being able to soften their present lot" (Farmer's Letters, 114) ; 
and their hopes of saving enough to take a larger holding were seldom realised. 
Harte also expresses himself decidedly; he holds that the little farmer at a rent of 
thirty or forty pounds a year “ works and fares harder and is, in effect, poorer than 
ihe day labourer he employs. An husbandman thus circumstanced, is, beyond